President Joe Biden Says He’ll Consider Ban on TikTok If Congress Passes Bill

TikTok has risen in popularity quickly, especially among younger users, with its short video format and viral challenges. However, concerns about privacy and data security have plagued the app since its inception. The idea that user data could potentially be accessed by the Chinese government has led to calls for action to be taken against TikTok in the United States.

The legislation passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee is a step in that direction. By forcing ByteDance to sell its ownership of TikTok or face a ban in the US, the bill aims to protect American users’ data and privacy. While TikTok has denied any wrongdoing, the potential risks associated with a foreign-owned app having access to user data are too great to ignore.

If this bill does indeed make it to President Biden’s desk and is signed into law, it could have a significant impact on the app’s future in the US. TikTok would either have to comply with the new regulations or face being banned from the country altogether.

Florida Senate Approves Ban Of Homeless People From Sleeping on Public Property

The Florida Senate has recently passed a bill that places a ban on homeless camps to address the homelessness crisis in the state. This new legislation will require cities and counties to prevent individuals from sleeping in public places, forcing local governments to create designated encampment sites instead.

While some see this bill as a positive step towards addressing homelessness and providing necessary services to those in need, others are wary of the potential consequences. Critics argue that criminalizing homelessness by banning individuals from public spaces and threatening them with arrest is not a solution to the root causes of homelessness. They also raise concerns about the lack of provisions for safety, sanitation, and basic necessities in these encampment sites.

Despite the controversy surrounding the bill, Governor Ron DeSantis has expressed his support for it and is expected to sign it into law soon. Proponents of the bill, such as Ron Book of the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust, believe that while the bill may not be perfect, it is a step in the right direction. Book emphasizes the need for a comprehensive plan, adequate funding, and strong leadership to effectively address homelessness in the state.

Implementing this program statewide would come with a hefty price tag of over $500 million.

Fulton County DA Fani Willis disqualification ruling anticipated this week

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee is anticipated to make a ruling this week over whether District Attorney Fani Willis and/or special prosecutor Nathan Wade — with whom she had a romantic relationship — should be disqualified from their investigation and subsequent indictment of former President Donald Trump.

On March 1, McAfee heard three hours worth of closing arguments from attorneys representing Willis and some of Trump’s co-defendants, and said he hoped to make a decision on the case “over the next two weeks.” That two-week window expires on Friday, March 15, meaning Georgia’s March 12 presidential primary could be held while McAfee is still making his decision.

Willis is the locally elected district attorney who issued dozens of indictments in August 2023 accusing the nation’s 45th president and his allies of trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.

Willis is facing allegations she misused taxpayer funds and crossed ethical boundaries during her romantic relationship with Wade.

Early turnout nears 440K Georgia voters before election day Tuesday

Heading into election day Tuesday, nearly 440,000 people have already voted in Georgia’s presidential primary, and most of them have cast Republican ballots. Early voting ended Friday with a turnout of about 416,000 in-person voters during the past three weeks, according to state election data. An additional 24,000 voters have returned absentee ballots.

Commitment 2024: Live results from Super Tuesday presidential primaries

More than one-third of the total delegates available in both the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries will be awarded on Super Tuesday , when 16 states and one U.S. territory hold presidential nominating contests.

I SUPER TUESDAY: LIVE RESULTS

On the Republican side, 854 of 2,429 will be at stake on Super Tuesday, which is traditionally the biggest day on the presidential primary calendar when it comes to the number of states holding presidential primaries and caucuses, as well as the number of delegates in play. Democrats will award 1,420 delegates, also more than one-third of those at stake in all. Nobody will lock up the nomination on Super Tuesday, but each party’s frontrunner can get pretty close.

Former President Donald Trump , who has won every presidential contest in which he’s appeared on the ballot and earned 122 delegates, needs 971 more to hit his “magic number” of 1,215. Once he receives that many, he’ll have won a majority of available delegates to the Republican convention this summer and will be considered the party’s presumptive nominee.

Supreme Court restores Trump to ballot, rejecting state attempts to ban him

The Supreme Court on Monday restored Donald Trump to 2024 presidential primary ballots, rejecting state attempts to hold the Republican former president accountable for the Capitol riot. The justices ruled a day before the Super Tuesday primaries that states, without action from Congress first, cannot invoke a post-Civil War constitutional provision to keep presidential candidates from appearing on ballots. The outcome ends efforts in Colorado, Illinois, Maine and elsewhere to kick Trump, the front-runner for his party’s nomination, off the ballot because of his attempts to undo his loss in the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Trump’s case was the first at the Supreme Court dealing with a provision of the 14th Amendment that was adopted after the Civil War to prevent former officeholders who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office again. Colorado’s Supreme Court, in a first-of-its-kind ruling, had decided that the provision, Section 3, could be applied to Trump, who that court found incited the Capitol attack. No court before had applied Section 3 to a presidential candidate. Some election observers have warned that a ruling requiring congressional action to implement Section 3 could leave the door open to a renewed fight over trying to use the provision to disqualify Trump in the event he wins the election. In one scenario, a Democratic-controlled Congress could try to reject certifying Trump’s election on Jan. 6, 2025, under the clause. The issue then could return to the court, possibly in the midst of a full-blown constitutional crisis.

Nikki Haley wins the District of Columbia’s Republican primary and gets her first 2024 victory

Nikki Haley has won the Republican primary in the District of Columbia, notching her first victory of the 2024 campaign. Her victory Sunday at least temporarily halts Donald Trump’s sweep of the GOP voting contests, although the former president is likely to pick up several hundred more delegates in this week’s Super Tuesday races. Despite her early losses, Haley has said she would remain in the race at least through those contests, although she has declined to name any primary she felt confident she would win. Following her loss in her home state of South Carolina, Haley remained adamant that voters in the places that followed deserved an alternative to Trump despite his dominance thus far in the campaign.

Congress reveals long-awaited bills ahead of next week’s shutdown threat

Congressional leaders on Sunday unveiled the long-awaited bipartisan bills to fund parts of the government for the rest of fiscal year 2024, setting off a sprint to avert the looming shutdown threat in less than a week. The six spending bills fund a slew of agencies until early fall, including the departments of Agriculture, Interior, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Veterans Affairs, Energy, Justice, Commerce and Energy. 

The Hill reports the 1,050-page package includes more than $450 billion in funding for fiscal year 2024. Lawmakers have until Friday to pass the legislation or risk a partial government shutdown under a stopgap plan President Biden signed into law this week to buy more time for spending talks.  The Sunday rollout comes as Congress is behind in finishing up its funding work for fiscal 2024, which began five months ago. said Sunday that both sides were able to reach a funding compromise that will keep “the government open without cuts or poison pill riders.” 

However, Republicans are already claiming wins, touting cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the funding package.  The GOP-led House and Democrat-led Senate entered negotiations with vastly different bills this year, as House Republicans pursued much more partisan measures with steep cuts to government funding that went beyond budget caps agreed to as part of the debt limit deal brokered last year.

Trump-Biden rematch hits overdrive with Super Tuesday, State of the Union

Trump will have all but secured his party’s nomination after Super Tuesday, and Biden will use Thursday’s State of the Union address as a springboard to offer up a vision for a second term to millions of Americans before traveling in the days after the speech to battleground states Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Both men and their campaigns see it as being in their respective best interests for the general election cycle to kick into gear as quickly as possible, albeit for different reasons.

Trump and his team are ready to fully move on from nagging questions about Nikki Haley winning thousands of votes in the GOP primary, and the Trump campaign is eager to fully merge with the Republican National Committee (RNC) so it can bolster its lagging fundraising.

The Biden campaign, meanwhile, has insisted it will benefit once Trump is definitively the GOP nominee, a reality officials have argued millions of Americans have yet to realize.

“The next week is a big week,” said Jim Kessler, vice president of policy at the left-leaning think tank Third Way. “The Republican primary should be over at that point, and the president has the State of the Union. To me, the State of the Union is where Biden kicks off the general election.”

Sixteen states will head to the polls Tuesday to vote in presidential primaries. While Trump and Biden are on a collision course for a rematch in November, Tuesday’s results will allocate enough delegates to solidify that reality.

Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations, is still in the race, but she has been unable to point to a single state where she can beat Trump.

Baltimore mayoral challengers question mayor’s spending of ARPA funding

A challenger to Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott leveled harsh criticism over the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal pandemic aid through the American Rescue Plan Act.

Democratic primary mayoral candidate Thiru Vignarajah on Thursday accused Scott of using Baltimore’s allocation as “a personal slush fund.”

He’s calling for an independent forensic audit to get to the bottom of “unilateral” and “nebulous” distributions to dozens of nonprofit organizations, as well as $2 million to the Service Employees International Union, $15 million to Clean Corps to clean trash in city neighborhoods and $5 million to Lexington Market.

“It’s a thinly veiled political payback in a city that has had it pay-to-play culture for too long,” Vignarajah said.

Fellow Democratic primary challenger and former Baltimore mayor, Sheila Dixon, questioned why Scott didn’t use ARPA funds for roads and bike lanes and to synchronize traffic lights.

“I agree with some of the criticism. It’s clearly a missed opportunity, and it clearly shows the mismanagement of this current administration,” Dixon said. “(The money could have been used on) getting those pools open, recycling would not have stopped. I would have met hiring the private sector to partner with the city while we build up our revenue and our inventory of new trucks, EMS, fire trucks fire stations. There’s a disconnect. It’s about accountability, and it’s about management.”

WBAL-TV 11 News reached out to Scott for an interview. His City Hall office called this a political issue. His re-election campaign office said Vignarajah has not offered “any viable vision” for how he would use ARPA funding.